INTRO:
When creating a story, the characters are obviously the main focus of the story. Wanting to engage the readers with your character(s) is an important factor to getting more readers when new episodes come out, when a well developed character is created, it can get your readers more interested into further reading your story to learn more about your characters. These are not something that you have to add to characters, however they’re things you should take into consideration.
Give your character(s) realistic traits:
I’m gonna start off a little bit vague here, a character should be given realistic traits that readers can relate to in some ways. The readers might want to see at least some humanly relatable traits that can create a nice or bitter relationship with the character, giving a villain some realistic human traits would never hurt your story.
Flaws/Fears:
Unless your story specifically revolves around someone who is actually perfect, a realistic story should show character flaws and or fears one way or another. Making them entirely perfect makes it harder to relate to and get attached to, because like all people, they need to have flaws and fears (and several other factors that I’ll eventually cover) to further draw conflict and or a resolution to the story. Flaws and fears play a huge role in relationships and interactions with other characters, emotions (disappointment, sadness, happiness, relieved etc). This can be expressed explicitly through speech or indirectly through character reaction.
For example:
- A character might show a fear to the dark so they feel relieved that the room is brightly lit up .
Identities:
Giving characters a known identity is important in identifying them and can play a small or large factor in emotions and perspective. Giving them simple identifications like names, age, place where they live can be their identity. Getting into further details such as race, religious beliefs, level of education, personal relationships etc. is recommended when your story is based off of those things. (Personally I like it when the author adds more details about the character(s), even if it doesn’t play a huge part in the story, it gives more insight.)
For example:
- A character can disagree and feel mad at someone who pokes fun at their choices or at other’s
- A character can view a certain type of religious holiday as unimportant because they follow no religion
- A character can feel confused because their home doesn’t have a certain slang/object.
(Do not take the examples above too seriously)
Motivation/Goals:
Giving the character a motivation and goal is what keeps the story going, leading up to the resolution. A goal could be the end point or check point of a story, however there should be a motivation behind why the character wants to reach that goal and not to give up no matter what. The motivation should be a strong and reasonable motivation that impacted the character in a huge way.
For example:
- The kidnapping of a close friend greatly impacted the character’s emotions, therefore making the character want to save them. The motivation is the friend and the goal is the rescuing.
Happy Places:
When I say happy places, it does not have to be literal. We’ve talked about fear and flaws, but a state of mind or a place where the character can calm down, gather their emotions and think about stuff just adds a relatable trait to them. It can be a memory or object that affects the character in a positive way and calms them down, adding them a place to “retreat” is a good humanly trait. Adding a happy moment also makes the negative moments more impactful to the story.
For example:
- A character can use the library as a place to “retreat” and calm down
- A character can use a picture of a good memory to make them feel relaxed knowing that they’re safe or in a better place, making a picture of a bad moment more sad for the character because they’re full of grief that because the moment is gone
Generalizing:
Since there are just too many key points, I’ll generalize a few here (feel free comment some)!
Personality: This is to add a feeling or emotion that they feel on an average day, making a reaction of a new event more important and meaningful.
Emotional/physical limits: We all love it when characters push themselves to face their fears, but at a certain point, they need to break down and let it all out, this again, adds a humanly trait that’s relatable.
Redemption: We all hate it when our character(s) screws up, but it gives more meaning to the parts where they are seeking redemption.
Story: Give them a past, present and maybe a glimpse of the future of themselves. Don’t drown your readers into reading too much of the past or future especially though, it can get pretty boring after like 3 episodes of the past.
Uniqueness: We all want our characters to stand out and be special, it can be a combination of different personalities, their fears, their past/present, limits etc, all of these separate your character from the rest.
NOTE: If you haven’t already noticed a pattern, bad traits/moments make good traits/moments more meaningful.
